Canada's synchro team finishes an almost pre-determined fourth in London

Take it and smile, girls

The team from Canada competes during the synchronized swimming team free routine final.

Photograph by: Mark J. Terrill
, AP

LONDON - Royal Mail should have sponsored London's synchronized swimming events, seeing how every competing nation could have mailed in their performances and saved themselves the expense of coming to England to actually perform their routines.

Canada finished a familiar if puzzling fourth in Friday's team free routine, their challenging, acrobatic, circus-themed, Cirque de Soleil-assisted routine lifting the roof off the aquatic centre.

The Canadian team was fourth after Thursday's technical routine, and there it stayed Friday.

Russia, China and Spain were first, second and third in technical; that's where they stayed, to finish on the podium.

Japan, Great Britain, Egypt and Australia were 5-8 in technical. They were 5-8 after the free routine.

This was Russia's fourth consecutive Olympic team gold, its 197.030 points giving it a 3.020 lead on China. Spain's 193.120 led the Canadians' 189.630.

The only who-finishes-where? drama came when there was a delay posting Spain's score. There might have been a thought that a swimmer had touched pool bottom, a deduction of two points, but that wasn't the case.

One wag on Twitter cut to the chase, suggesting the judging panel couldn't find the envelope in which the results had been mailed.

Canada was fourth at the 2008 Olympics, fifth in 2004, a bronze medalist in 2000. At the worlds: fourth in 2001 and 2009, then fifth, fifth and sixth from 2003-07.

You thought that professional wrestling was rigged? It's a mere pretender to synchro's throne.

You expect such judging ugliness in this glittery sport, as you used to expect bogus, corrupt judging in ice-dancing. When faced with an IOC threat of removal from the Olympics, the International Skating Union made changes to dance that has largely cleaned it up.

Maybe it's time for the IOC to have a chat with FINA, aquatic sports' world governing body, to address synchro's obscenely predictable judging.

“That can be good,” veteran Canadian coach Julie Sauvé said of such a meeting. “Sure, they have to.”

It's the lack of judging transparency that most troubles Sauvé, who's been in this game for 35 years. Individual marks aren't posted, just final scores; no one except the referee knows how, say, the Russian or Chinese judge is marking up or down a team.

“We had eight or nine European judges of 14 on the panel today,” Sauvé said. “That's very much. We'd like to see more fair play. We have five continents, we should try to balance the judges. This is big work to do.”

Sauvé was thrilled with the Friday performance of her athletes, who showed an acrobatic style and charismatic flair matched by none of the others.

But the coach also was “shocked” when her team was judged to be 1.8 points behind Spain following the technical routine.

Sauvé didn't let her athletes see her displeasure, knowing she must always project calm and complete control. But she believed that the soccer-themed technical deserved better than it got, and likewise of Friday's free.

“Honestly, if the girls fell in a lift, you could say, ‘Okay, we shouldn't score well,'” Sauvé said. “But they performed so well. We know we have a program so good that when we came here the first day, other countries came to look at us.

“We have new stuff here. Our program is really unique and doesn't look like any other. We are very creative to be different. One leg move took three months of training for its five seconds in the routine.”

But here's where synchro athletes and coaches become almost willing victims: they love their sport so much, they're willing to turn the other rosy cheek to the pool-deck judges who are making a mockery of it.

“We've been in fourth place and had the same mark for a long time,” admitted swimmer Tracy Little of Pointe-Claire, Que., who was beaming after her team's superb performance. “We can just control what we can do out there. Who knows if they'll give us the same mark if we swim perfectly or not?

“When we were finished swimming, I couldn't have been more proud. I knew during the swim how focused and how good it was going. When I finished, I didn't care what the heck judges were going to flash. I didn't care what the scores were for the first time in my synchro career.

“For me, waking up with each girl coming out there and saying how hard we worked, they can't take that moment away from us. No matter where I finished, I'm going to have this forever.”

Of trying to make changes in the boardroom, Little said, “As a swimmer, I'm not concerned about that. It's just me going out there and having fun with my team.”

Synchro pretty much eats its own, allowing judges to drop in on teams, look at their routines, and give feedback and offer suggestions to make their work more palatable.

“That's a job we have to do [more of] in the future,” said Sauvé, who denied this was lobbying favours. “You need it. They're the ones who judge you and give you scores.”

The coach said she believed in her heart that Canada could claw its way onto the podium, hoping for a miracle, as it were.

“You never know to the end. You can never give up,” she said. “You work four years with these girls, you have to encourage them to keep going and fight, fight, fight. They're trained for that, since 6, 7 years old. Today isn't the first bad judgment for them. Even when you're 10, you can think you deserve a score that you don't get. The girls are used to it. We don't swim only for the score. We swim because we love it.”

And therein is a large part of the problem. Knowing that they'll be hosed by judges, they simply plunge into the pool and long minutes later bubble to the surface with a radiant smile.

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